THE DANCE MACABRE 


A Pantomime 


By GUSTAV SCHEHL 

II 


New York & London 
MITCHELL KENNERLEY 







Copyright, 1912, 

BY OLIVER HERFORD. 



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©CI.A3283GS 


THE DANCE MACABRE 


A Pantomime 

T he curtains of the tall French window are drawn aside 
and across its wide panes the massive cornice of the 
building opposite and the naked immensity of the sky¬ 
scrapers beyond loom monstrous in the moonlight. Beyond 
the shadowy cliffs of steel and marble stretches a frozen sea 
of glimmering roofs and far away, hanging like a majestic 
constellation above the lesser stars of the river front, gleams 
the pale tiara of the Brooklyn bridge. 

The city lies in sleep, the tormented, fitful sleep of the 
wickedest city in the world, broken now by the muttered rav¬ 
ing of an elevated train, now by the despairing groan of a 
distant ferry-boat, or the muffled nightmare shriek of a vessel 
passing through Hell Gate. 

Outside the French window, the low stone balustrade and 
the urn of growing ferns and flowers, that stands upon its 
ledge, make a sharp black pattern against the luminous picture 
of the sleeping city. The shadowy nasturtiums stir darkly and 
the black plumes of the overhanging ferns tremble in the 
faint night breeze. 

Low and vibrant, as though the voice of the moonlight 
itself, comes the sound of the Metropolitan tower clock strik¬ 
ing three and as the last stroke dies away a miniature cathe¬ 
dral clock somewhere in the dark room chimes an elfin echo. 

For a moment the room is intensely still, then piercing 
the dull thickness of the wall comes the sound of quick foot¬ 
steps in the hall outside. As the sound ceases abruptly, there is 
the low jiggle of a groping latchkey, followed by the click of 
the turning lock, then swiftly and silently the door is pushed 
open and as swiftly and silently closed and locked again, by the 
man who has entered and now stands quite still in the shadow 
of the portiere. 



4 


THE DANCE MACABRE 


The man is in evening dress. He wears a black opera 
cloak and opera hat. He stands close to the door and listens. 
His face is very white. Silently he draws the heavy portiere 
across the door, then noiselessly, crossing the room to the 
French window, draws the long curtains over the moonlit 
panes. 

Now the room is in darkness. Suddenly, with the click 
of some invisible button, comes a glow of light from a silk 
shaded electric lamp on a table near the centre of the room. 
Beside the table stands the man. His finger still touches the 
electric button of the lamp. His left hand clutches at his side, 
he breathes heavily, there are drops of moisture on his forehead 
that glisten in the light of the electric lamp. 

The air of the room is stifling. He has taken off the heavy 
opera hat and laid it upon the table, now he tugs at the collar 
of his cloak breaking the fastening, and the white oblong of his 
shirt and waistcoat shines wanly in the lamplight as he throws 
back the folds of his cloak. 

All at once the man is shaken as if by a blow from some¬ 
thing invisible. He turns sharply. Probing with faltering 
eyes the obscurity of the darkling corners, he listens in an 
anguish of suspense for the repetition of that vague, muffled 
thumping, fearful as the beating of his own heart, faint as the 
flutter of an escaping soul. There is no sound but the ticking 
of the clock, one moment terribly loud, the next scarcely 
audible. 

Released from the tension, the man drops into the chair 
beside the mahogany table and buries his head in his hands. 
The next instant he is sitting bolt upright, his nerves aquiver, 
like the antennae of a frightened insect. 

What was it? Where was it? It was as if something 
without substance had brushed his face, something unseen had 
vanished. 

The man jumps to his feet and hearkens fearfully. Moving 
with stealthy steps toward the door, he listens again in the 
shadow of the portiere. There is no sound in the hall, no sound 
anywhere. 

Once more the man stands by the table and his head is 
bowed and his face is hidden in his hands. But through his 


THE DANCE MACABRE 


5 


hands peers something which no darkness can hide, no shield¬ 
ing hands can blot from view. 

Thrusting out his arms with a violent movement as if to 
push away the dreadful vision, the black cloak slips from his 
shoulders and drops to the floor behind him. 

At the same moment there comes the sound of a knock, 
appallingly loud, yet muffled, like the sound of a gloved flst 
upon a heavy oaken door. Instantly the man’s body becomes 
rigid as with the shock of electrocution—his hands thrown 
back at his sides, his Angers extended, his wide staring eyes 
fixed upon the door, he waits for what must come. 

For a long half minute he listens, scarcely daring to 
breathe, then as he feels the cloak about his feet, the power of 
reasoning returns. 

Stooping quickly, he picks up the fallen cloak and from 
a pocket of it draws forth something that gleams wickedly in 
the lamp light. With a shudder, the man turns away his face 
as he places the revolver upon the table before him. Some¬ 
thing like a white snake that had been coiled about the handle 
of the revolver slips unnoticed to the floor. It is the long glove 
of a woman and upon it is a bright red stain. 

There is something moist on the man’s right hand, some¬ 
thing moist and clinging between his fingers. Holding his 
palm toward the light the man stares fascinated at the stained 
fingers, self-accusing witnesses whose lightest touch would 
print an irrefutable seal to their dreadful testimony, and a fit of 
trembling seizes him. 

As he looks about in desperation his eye catches the gleam 
of white, unnatural white in the shadow of the table, and he 
starts as a horse starts at a white paper in a dark roadway. 

Controlling himself with an immense effort, he stoops and 
picks up the glove, the long white glove of a woman, and the 
light falls upon the bright red stain. 

The glove drops from the man’s hand upon the table, as he 
shrinks back with shut eyes and distorted face. 

Something passes before his closed lids, fanning his cheek 
with the faint chill of its passing. As he opens his eyes, the 
gray bulk of a huge moth lurches heavily against the lamp 
shade, rimmed with the blur of whirring wings and drumming 


6 


THE DANCE MACABRE 


horribly against the stretched silk with a sound like distant 
death drums. 

As the eyes of the man, at first dilated with the dread of 
what they feared to see, catch sight of the moth, their pupils 
contract with rage and hate. 

Forgetting his horror of the bloody stain, he picks up the 
long snake-like glove and slashes viciously at the whirring 
shadow, striking only the lamp and leaving a moist trans¬ 
lucent streak on the green silk shade. 

Blanched with rage and abhorrence, the man turns sharply 
in the direction it has gone, but the moth has vanished. Only 
for a moment. Again the hateful thing appears and circles 
about the shaded lamp. Again the man strikes at it with the 
bloodstained glove and once more, like a mocking sprite, the 
moth soars out of reach and vanishes into the shadows. 

Breathless and baffled, supporting himself against the 
chairback, the man waits, his hand still clutching the glove, 
the pupils of his eyes contracted with hate and fear, searching 
the darkened corners of the shadowy room. 

As he gazes, hearkening, through the intense stillness, 
there comes again the sound of distant death drums, and along 
the ceiling, blurred and formless, reels the uncanny visitant, 
shockingly enlarged by its grey close-following shadow. 

Nearer and nearer it comes and the man’s hand shakes 
as he clutches the long glove of the dead woman. Now again 
it circles the lamp and beats its ghostly tattoo against the drum 
of the stretched silk shade. And the man’s eyes, dreadful with 
the livid reflection of the lamplight, follow it as the eyes of a 
snake follow a fluttering bird. 

Suddenly, as if dazed with the glare, the moth stumbles 
in its flight and falls clumsily upon the table. In an instant 
the lash of the descending glove has maimed it hopelessly. In 
vain it strives to rise, spinning round with whirring wings 
and standing grotesquely on its head like a fantastic acrobat. 
Again the glove descends and now the hateful thing lies 
crumpled, motionless. 

Loathingly the man bends over the dead insect, shudder¬ 
ing anew as he sees upon its dark and battered thorax the grey 
symbol of mocking death. Picking it up by its frayed and 


THE DANCE MACABRE 


7 


twisted wing, he carries it across the room to the window. 
With his hand upon the curtain, he pauses as if checked by a 
sudden fear, and returning quickly to the table, presses the 
button of the electric lamp extinguishing the light. 

And now, as he draws aside the window curtain, the 
fear haunted room is purified by the gentle presence of the 
moonlight, blessing with silver hands the dark mahogany, 
(dark as blood) transmuting the lattice panes of the tall book¬ 
case to pale sapphire and turning the silver and the cut glass 
on the sideboard to pearl and opal. 

Fearful of the dead creature he holds, and daring not to 
measure with his eyes the abyss before him, the man stretches 
his arm across the narrow balcony and flings the loathsome 
thing over the stone ledge, then, seized with a panic fancy 
that the winged horror may come to life and drag him with 
it into that floorless dark, he shuts and bolts the window with 
feverish haste and, drawing the curtain, feels his way back to 
the table and turns on the electric light. 

The sight of the revolver and the bloodstained glove jerk 
him (as with the hangman’s jerk) back from the dead horror 
of his fevered fancy to the living horror of himself. 

Once more there reel through his brain, like moving pic¬ 
ture films, the scenes of the past few hours. The Suspicion, 
the Proof, and Accusation, the Reproaches, the Pleading, the 
tears of the man that was himself, the taunts, the insults, the 
curses of that other, the woman, and through it all the growl 
of the piano in the room above, muttering the weird malisons 
of the Dance Macabre. 

A cold sweat breaks out on the man's forehead; he presses 
his hands against his ears, but he cannot shut out the memory 
of the woman’s shriek that echoed in his brain as he stumbled 
down the dark stairway. 

* * 

The cut glass decanter shakes in the man’s hand as he 
pours out a full tumbler of brandy, and the thin glass clatters 
against his teeth as, clutching the sideboard for support, he 
drains it at a single gulp. 

Even as he swallows it, the glow of the brandy is chilled 
by an icy fear that stiffens the sliaking terror of the moment 


8 


THE DANCE MACABRE 


before into a stony semblance of courage. 

Motionless, with lifted glass, a grim caricature of good 
cheer, he glares fixedly at the long green window curtain. 

There is something outside the window. Something— 
somebody—is knocking against the window. At first, light 
as the tap of a rainbent ivyleaf, faint as the drum of a moth’s 
wing, with each thump of the man’s heart it grows louder, 
more insistent. 

But no ivy ever climbed to that window one hundred 
and fifty feet from the ground, no moth ever drummed to the 
grisly ragtime of the dance Macabre. 

* * * 

The brass rings make no sound as the heavy curtains are 
slowly drawn apart, there is no sound of a bolt as the glass 
doors are pushed open. 

Standing in the moonlit window frame is the tall figure of 
a woman. Her face is grey white, her eyes are glazed and 
staring. Her mirthless lips are parted in a stark vermillion 
smile. Upon her left breast, close to the edge of her corsage, 
is a deep crimson spot, rimmed with livid purple, and the edge 
of the grey corsage is stained with crimson. A winglike fold 
of her moth grey ball dress is looped to either arm by a bangle 
of wrought silver. Her right arm is encased in a long white 
glove. Her left arm, save for the silver bangle, is bare. As 
the man gazes, his heart seems to stop beating. The empty 
glass, loosed from his fingers, falls splintering upon the floor. 
He tries to look away, but he cannot take his eyes from the 
woman’s face. His lips form the twin syllables of her name 
but they make no sound. 

The light of the lamp behind him falls full upon the 
woman’s face, illuminating with terrible distinctness the glassy 
eyes and the changeless porcelain smile. As the man gazes, his 
fear gives place to a fascination that is fear intensified. 

Suddenly there is the click of an electric button and the 
light of the lamp goes out. 

A new terror clutching at his heart, the man turns his 
head and there, by the mahogany table, her pale eyes and 
the frozen laughter of her mouth gleaming in the moonlight. 


THE DANCE MACABRE 


9 


stands the woman, her arm extended as she draws over it the 
long white bloodstained glove. 

With shaking knees, catching for support the sideboard, 
the sofa, anything that offers, the man edges his way towards 
the door, his only thought to get out into the street, no matter 
what the risk. The woman neither stirs nor turns her eyes, 
yet as he moves, their glassy stare seems to follow him as the 
painted eyes of some sinister pictured face in a portrait gallery. 

Covering his eyes with his hands, he sinks into the nearest 
seat, a long low sofa covered with heavy Kelim drapery. 
As he crouches trembling, his face buried in his hands sobbing 
incoherent prayers, cursing his cowardice that he durst not 
turn the pistol upon himself, there comes to his ears the dull 
complaining voice of a piano in the room above. 

That there is no apartment above the one he is in, nothing 
but the steel girders supporting the roof, does not seem strange 
to him. At first confused and unrecognizable, each moment 
the music grows more distinct, until presently the whole room 
shudders with the unearthly syncopation of the dance Macabre. 

As the man listens, unspeakably awed, not daring to 
uncover his face, something light as a cobweb brushes across 
the back of his hands. 

5{! 

She seemed to fioat rather than to dance. To the man’s 
fancy it was as if the demon music cast a shadow and this was 
the shadow. A tortured soul tossed on the stygian sound 
waves of that unearthly melody, poising, drifting, now a 
shapely nix writhing in the moonlight, now a formless shadow 
slouching in the darkness, as the thin web of her draperies 
alternately flouts or caresses her swaying body. Now as she 
circles towards him, she beckons with her hands, but in her 
staring eyes is neither speech nor invitation. 

Mastered by an overwhelming impulse as abhorrent as 
it is beyond control, the man moves forward to meet her with 
arms outspread, but as he closes them about her, the wcman 
melts from his clasp and slips, staring and beckoning into the 
shadow. 

Round and round the dim room dance the strange speech¬ 
less pair like tormented motes in the quiet moonlight, the 


lO 


THE DANCE MACABRE 


woman moth-like, repulsive, the man mad with hate and desire, 
a maniacal marionette grotesc^uely pied in the black and white 
of evening dress, and the deathly pallor of his distorted face, 
now laughing, now sobbing hysterically, but never pausing in 
the mad measure, as round and round the dim room he follows 
the grey woman, stretching out his arms beseechingly and 
clasping nothing, clutching savagely with tense fingers and 
gripping only the air. 

H; 5i< * 

At last baffled and panting from exhaustion, he drops 
heavily upon the low sofa, his finger nails piercing the coarse 
weave of the Kelim rug. The music, as if it too has spent its 
evil forces, has changed to a low tremulous waltz measure 
through whose grieving cadence now and again (like a skeleton 
tramping through swaying lilies), jigs the ghastly motif of the 
dance Macabre. 

Across the room, dimly cameod against the greying sap¬ 
phire panes of the tall bookcase, stands the woman with droop¬ 
ing arms and head thrown back as though swooning to the 
dying throbs of the waltz. 

As the man watches her from the sofa, his tense fingers 
clenching the fabric of its draped covering, a change comes 
over his white drawn face. In the graying light from the 
window, his eyes have the glint of steel. 

With a cry like a tortured animal, he grips the rug in both 
his hands and springing upon the woman crushes her body 
beneath its heavy folds. 

There is no sound but the sound of breaking glass as the 
man stumbles forward against the door of the bookcase and the 
rug falls limply to the floor. 

As he looks from the shattered glass and the unbroken 
row of books behind it, to the disordered drapery at his feet, 
moved by a strange impulse, the man stoops and lifts a corner 
of the rug. 

Upon the floor before him, where a moment before the 
heavy fabric had lain, a grey Tiling stirs uncouthly. As he 
draws back with physical loathing, the moth, with a shruglike 
movement, lifts itself into the. air and circles about his head in 
uncanny sprawling flight. 


THE DANCE MACABRE 


II 


Covering his face with his arms, in abject terror the man 
stumbles blindly about the room, round and round the mahog¬ 
any table, past the sofa, past the bookcase again, followed at 
every turn by the circling moth, and cringing with unspeak¬ 
able horror under the ceasless thud of its soft body, the chill 
breath of its whirring wings upon his hot hands, his burning 
forehead. 

Now, with unsteady feet and lowered head buried in his 
arms, with no thought but to escape the torment of the buzzing 
Maenad, the man stumbles blindly over the threshold of the 
open window and, stretching out his arms to save himself, falls 
forward with all his weight, clutching desperately at the urn of 
flowers that stands upon the low balcony. 

There is a sharp crunching sound of loosening concrete as 
the slender urn tips slowly outwards with the man’s weight. 

Unable to regain his balance or to release his hold on the 
toppling urn, his feet straining in futile resistance as they are 
lifted from the ground, the man tips stiffly and quietly forward 
like a mechanical figure. 

As the moth plunges silently upward into the cold deeps 
of the morning, from the pavement far below comes faintly 
the crash of shivering stone. 


CURTAIN. 















































